Folk used to threaten their children with a story of how the fox would come for those who did not behave themselves, and take them away on his long tail. But the threat was not too frightening, for they used to tell another story of the fox and the buck, and it made us so happy that the fox fared so badly. The story goes like this:
It was an eye-opener when, earlier in the year, I realised that my translation of The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe will be the most comprehensive edition ever published.
Since then, I have had a growing impression that I should (also) publish it in Norwegian – the folk narratives and prefaces and introductions and notes would all come directly from the early publications; my texts would have to be rewritten for a Norwegian audience.
This is a thought in progress, including a prospective idiomatic title.
The Annotated Edition is the most comprehensive edition of Asbjørnsen & Moe that has ever been published in any language. You get all 150 folk narratives (122 folktales, 28 hulder tales and folk legends), original prefaces from eight editions, Jørgen Moe’s substantial scholarly introduction to the Norwegian folktales, more than 350 illustrations by Theodor Kittelsen, Erik Werenskiold, Otto Sinding, Hans Gude, Adolph Tidemand, August Schneider, Johan Eckersberg, etc. Asbjørnsen’s and Moe’s original notes on the majority of the folktales, newly-researched editor’s notes on every folktale and hulder tale and folk legend, a comprehensive bibliography in each volume.
If you choose the Just the Stories edition, you get all 150 folk narratives published by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885) and Jørgen Moe (1813-1882), arranged according to the order of Samlede eventyr (3 vols. Oslo: Gyldendal. 1936), which has become the standard Norwegian edition. Three folktales have been added to the collection for the first time. This edition is fully illustrated with artwork by Theodor Kittelsen, Erik Werenskiold, Otto Sinding, Hans Gude, Adolph Tidemand, August Schneider, Johan Eckersberg, etc. Here, however, there are no introductions and no appendices of notes, following Asbjørnsen’s revelation that to many readers, “the scholarly appendices are an insignificant, unimportant, or incomprehensible ballast, which also makes such a book disproportionately more expensive.”
Composing a folktale from Asbjørnsen & Moe's records, the only variant of Snow White (AT-709) collected in Norway.
The princess, who for her kindness has been made more beautiful than anyone else, is taken away into the forest to be murdered. Of course, the boy who has been charged with killing her cannot do so, for she is so beautiful. He has, however, been charged with taking her tongue back to her wicked stepmother as proof of her death. What should he do?
Of course, they should kill the princess’s lap dog, and cut out its tongue, a course of action they agree upon and execute.
Apparently, beauty is only skin deep.
This folktale will be appearing for the first time in my planned “Forgotten Folktales from Norway,” which will present new compositions of previously unpublished Norwegian folktales.
All six volumes (three volumes of the annotated edition + three volumes of the unannotated edition) locked and loaded in Amazon. Assuming I can appease the content moderators, they will be ready to purchase Sunday 1. September. As soon as I get approval, I will do my best to link to the edition pages.
(I would have liked a lower price, but Amazon demands more money than everyone in the world.)
On a journey in 1814 through the old Norse country of the Hebrides, the Orkneys, and the Shetland Islands, Walter Scott writes in his diary: “the dwarfs are the prime agents in the machinery of Norwegian superstition.”
In 1851, Benjamin Thorpe made an ill-considered statement, doubting the authenticity of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's Norwegian Hulder Tales and Folk Legends.
In his preface to the second edition of the first volume of these Norwegian stories (1859), Asbjørnsen takes issue with Thorpe's comment, demonstrating a provenance of European folklore that goes back to the worship of Freya among the Germanic peoples.
165 years later, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's defence of the Norwegian legend has all-but negated my ability to suspend disbelief when reading modern fantasy or fairy tales. Many of these stories, disconnected from their folkloric roots, now ring hollow.
“The Girl Who Stole the Troll’s Bellweather Cow” is an unpublished variant of “Askeladden Who Stole the Troll’s Silver Ducks, etc.” in which there is very little male participation; the lead is a girl who is advised by a crone in the forest to travel to a troll’s mountain, where she kills the troll’s daughter, the troll’s wife, and then the troll, before taking the sun back to the king. There is no romantic interest.
#WritersCoffeeClub 15. June: Is your work child or teen-friendly, or does it contain themes more suited for mature audiences?
Let me see: Prejudice. Racism. Familial treachery. Mockery. Bullying. Sedition. Heresy. Astrology. Necromancy. Satanism. Pre-marital sex. Implied cross-species sex. Misogyny. Kidnapping. Accidental and intentional injury. Death by misadventure. Torture. Murder. Dismemberment. Decapitation. Accidental and intentional cannibalism.
So yes. It is certainly child- and teen-friendly, for it contains themes more suited for mature audiences. We still read folktales and legends for our children, n’est-ce pas?
This time, I write briefly about the provenance and transmission of the folktales and legends we know so well, and how I believe that the great age and broad distribution of the stories obligates us to treat the old stories with the greatest respect.
Please define your terms, and differentiate what you are calling fairy tales from myths, legends, folktales, and even wonder tales. If you can't (and we know you can't – no one has been able to), do at least acknowledge the fuzzy, overlapping, organic scope of the concepts.
There is no such thing as a fairy tale. There are, however, many fairy tales. – paraphrasing Jack Zipes (I think) from memory.
The three volumes of The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe, the non-annotated edition, are all-but ready. All the folktales. All the legends. All the illustrations.
This edition will be published at roughly the same time as The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe, the annotated edition, which is only waiting for the final editing of my prefaces. All the folktales. All the legends. All the original prefaces and introductions. All the notes, both original and newly researched.
This huge translation and writing project I am fitting together in its final form is too big to fit in my brain all at once. I must therefore trust the decisions that numerous iterations of me from the past made. I have to resist the urge to revisit every detail, just because I may have had a bad night's sleep. In this way, I expect be able to publish a work bigger and more comprehensive than any I ever imagined producing, while still retaining some semblance of my sanity. That's the hope.